RBG's Brave & Brilliant Women: List 4

by Nadine Epstein
In collaboration with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the author compiled brief biographies of thirty-three Jewish women, from biblical times to the 20th-century, who overcame obstacles to change the world in inspiring ways.

This list covers "Twentieth Century"–"A Call to Action."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4
40 words 21 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. seminary
    a school for training ministers or priests or rabbis
    Regina attended a teachers’ seminary where she was trained to teach Judaism to girls, but that wasn’t enough for her.
  2. intuition
    instinctive knowing, without the use of rational processes
    She wrote, among other things, that female rabbis were a “cultural necessity” because of “female qualities” such as compassion and psychological intuition.
  3. ordain
    invest with ministerial or priestly authority
    A shift away from strict tradition was occurring within Germany’s Orthodox Jewish community at the time, but ordaining a woman was still considered out of bounds.
  4. liberal
    having political views favoring reform and progress
    In 1935, nearly five years after she graduated, she was ordained by an important liberal rabbi.
  5. pastoral
    of or relating to a minister
    Although known as a “thinking and agile preacher,” no Berlin synagogue would hire her. Instead she found work providing pastoral care in the city’s hospitals and other social institutions.
  6. vocation
    the particular occupation for which you are trained
    God planted in our heart skills and a vocation without asking about gender. Therefore, it is the duty of men and women alike to work and create according to the skills given by God.
  7. render
    give or supply
    When Regina and her mother were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1942, she continued to preach and render spiritual care to her fellow inmates.
  8. deter
    turn away from as by fear or persuasion
    She didn’t have any tools, so she fashioned tiny scalpels from sewing needles and used a watchmaker’s forceps. Nor was she deterred when Allied bombing forced the family to flee the city; she rebuilt her lab in the countryside.
  9. barred
    preventing entry or exit or a course of action
    The woman once barred from studying and working in her own country became a celebrated figure.
  10. prestigious
    having an excellent reputation; respected
    She even won a prestigious fellowship to Yale, where she earned her doctorate degree in law.
  11. tribunal
    an assembly to conduct judicial business
    There she helped draft the rules establishing the American military tribunals that meted out justice to accused major Nazi war criminals.
  12. staunch
    firm and dependable especially in loyalty
    These early experiences turned Bella into a staunch feminist and inspired her to become a lawyer to fight for women’s equality.
  13. prodigious
    great in size, force, extent, or degree
    Once in Washington, she poured her prodigious determination into fighting for equal rights for women.
  14. caucus
    a closed political meeting
    To encourage women to run for political office and to provide funds for their campaigns, she helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus.
  15. downtrodden
    abused or oppressed by people in power
    She never served in political office again, but Bella, the daughter of poor Russian immigrants, remained a high-profile figure for the rest of her life, fighting for the rights of downtrodden Americans, whatever their race, creed, or gender.
  16. disclosure
    the act of making something evident
    Two of her male colleagues, including her collaborator Maurice Wilkins, had shared her work with Watson and Crick without her permission. That disclosure had allowed Watson and Crick to build the chemical model of the DNA molecule and to calculate the size and structure of the helix.
  17. forge
    move ahead steadily
    In the face of unrelenting discrimination, Franklin forged ahead with her work, conducting other successful investigations.
  18. fruitful
    productive or conducive to producing in abundance
    She did fruitful work on plant and animal viruses, including polio, an infectious disease that killed and paralyzed more than half a million people worldwide each year during the 1940s and 1950s.
  19. mystique
    an aura of heightened interest surrounding a person or thing
    From that research came her groundbreaking 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, which sold millions of copies and was translated into many of the world’s languages. The book brought “second-wave” feminism to suburban American women four decades after the seventy-year struggle for women’s suffrage had been won, and Betty became the voice of housewives who yearned for lives outside their homes.
  20. shun
    avoid and stay away from deliberately
    Her quest for what was often called “women’s liberation” was controversial. Some friends shunned her and her family.
  21. relentless
    not willing or able to stop or yield
    Still, her books—and relentless activism—dramatically changed how many American women viewed themselves and chose to live their lives.
  22. appalled
    struck with dread, shock, or dismay
    But from a young age Nadine was appalled by the way the country’s white minority treated its majority Black population.
  23. apartheid
    a social policy of racial segregation
    While she did not set out to write political novels, she grounded her stories in the injustices of the apartheid system and the police state it fostered. She was known for her sensitive portrayals of individuals living amid the complexities of South African society, from poor Black villagers and house servants to wealthy white aristocrats and government officials.
  24. atrocity
    an act of shocking cruelty
    The South African government banned some of her books, but her work was read around the world and brought attention to the atrocities happening to Black South Africans under apartheid.
  25. integrity
    moral soundness
    Nadine believed that the key to a meaningful life was honesty and integrity and that writers had a responsibility as human beings to take a stand for what is right.
  26. conscience
    motivation deriving from ethical or moral principles
    Although she called herself a “Jew forever,” she insisted that her support for Black people in South Africa had nothing to do with being Jewish. “Social conscience does not come from being part of a persecuted race,” she said.
  27. advent
    arrival that has been awaited
    After the collapse of apartheid and the advent of Black majority rule in South Africa in 1994, Nadine celebrated the election of Mandela to the presidency.
  28. perpetrate
    perform an act, usually with a negative connotation
    She continued to write about the impact of racism and economic inequality on both white and Black people, and spoke out against human rights injustices perpetrated under Black majority rule.
  29. derogatory
    expressive of low opinion
    She also encountered anti-Semitism. Colleagues sometimes made derogatory jokes and remarks about Jews.
  30. maverick
    someone who exhibits independence in thought and action
    In 2002, she wrote an autobiography, Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick.
  31. memorabilia
    objects that are valued because of their link to historical events or a particular interest
    The first room named for an individual at the NYSE, it features memorabilia from Muriel’s groundbreaking career.
  32. venture
    an investment that is risky but could yield great profits
    Only a small fraction of senior management positions in venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund firms are held by women.
  33. entrenched
    established firmly and securely
    In one of the last entries in her diary, she wrote about the “great injustice” in the false assumption that women were inferior to men. “Until recently, women silently went along with this, which was stupid, since the longer it’s kept up, the more deeply entrenched it becomes.”
  34. overwhelm
    overcome by superior force
    Anne’s writing has educated young people—and adults—around the world about the Holocaust and how cruelty and race-based hatred overwhelmed human goodness in her time.
  35. modest
    not large but sufficient in size or amount
    Roberta Peters loved to sing and her parents, a New York hatmaker and a shoe salesman, could tell that she had a fabulous voice. Despite their modest means, they encouraged her to pursue a career in music and made sure that she had everything she needed.
  36. poise
    great coolness and composure under strain
    She learned poise and how to strengthen her diaphragm for breath control, and studied Italian, French, German, piano, drama, and ballet.
  37. tenacity
    persistent determination
    Her tenacity was rewarded when she auditioned for the Met.
  38. sensation
    someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field
    She was a sensation. Six years of rigorous training had made Roberta an overnight opera star.
  39. rigorous
    demanding strict attention to rules and procedures
    She went through rigorous astronaut training and became a specialist in operating a remote-control mechanical arm that could move objects outside a spacecraft.
  40. disparity
    inequality or difference in some respect
    But there are still plenty of “glass ceilings” to break: women have yet to hold many of the highest-level positions in major Jewish organizations and are still paid significantly less than men for the same work. Women all across the United States face these same disparities. More doors are open, but unequal pay persists—despite the Equal Pay Act and other laws that have been passed.
Created on Fri Jul 05 16:16:27 EDT 2024 (updated Sat Jul 06 17:07:53 EDT 2024)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.